Infatuation and Other Disorders

I love you
In multiples of four.
I love you four times,
But if I accidentally love you a fifth time,
Then I have to love you sixteen times,
Which means I have to love you eleven more times.
I think about your face
At the center of a circle
That is in a graph
With four perpendicular radii
That all begin to rotate clockwise,
And sometimes I don’t sleep at night because I’m thinking
about the radii
And how none of them can ever rotate in your direction;
I count the letters in your name
In pairs
So none of the letters are alone.
You have an odd-number name, and it distresses me.
I count all of the letters that appear around your name,
Vainly hoping to stumble upon an even-lettered sentence
Containing you.
I love you in superlatives (absolutely),
I love you in three-six time, in rhapsodies, in frissons,
in splatterings of paint, in fine print, in map contours,
in naïve brush strokes, in clusters of feeling,
with punctuation, with expression, with bravado,
with crescendos, with flurries of affection
I love you I love you I love you I love you
In multiples of four
(in multiples of four
in multiples of four
in multiples of four)
in increments
of medicine
they think I should take
to take away the numbers
but it might take
also
other things
like the crescendos
in which I love you
and
what is the point
of anything
without crescendos